#(the way my ADHD has been leaping into the spotlight this week)

[miodiodavinci]

head in hands like "maybe i should have realized this about myself sooner" as i am surrounded by neon flashing signs that Very Clearly Indicate the thing i should have realized about myself sooner

[girllustrators]

What happens when you combine the tail-end of a case of viral meningitis, a workshop, and lack of preparation? A disaster, that's what. Okay, so maybe not a total disaster. The first half actually went pretty well, maybe because that was the part I was able to more thoroughly prepare before my downward spiral into sick. Or maybe because cinematic camera angles are something I could talk about backwards, forwards, and through the middle. But composition and staging are complicated topics at best, dastardly at worst. And where I normally prepare and prep for weeks beforehand, I walked in with little more than an outline, half an inflamed brain, and a toy model of the bat cave that I forgot why I'd brought it. Lesson learned? PREP. PREP. PREP. Know your teaching (and learning!) style! And ALWAYS have a back-up plan. I think pretty much anybody who writes or draws for a living (or makes a living in ANY sort of entertainment) is going to, at some point, be asked to give a lecture, a workshop, or take part in a Q&A (preferably for money, but not always). I have done all of the above. And except for Q&As, I have ALWAYS prepared weeks if not months in advance (but generally weeks). I draw up an outline. I start making notes. Then I literally write out everything I'm going to say, and bash it into my brain a few hundred times until I have it memorized. Then I throw out my notes and wing it. This has worked for me every time. Enter toddler, lack of time, and illness.  This time, I decided to try something different. I knew I wasn't going to have a lot of time to prep already because I had other projects I was working on, so I decided to look up how teachers prep for their classes. Also, I wasn't getting paid, so maybe it went down the priority list a bit. So instead of drafting out everything I was going to say, I instead made an OUTLINE. I know this subject, I thought. I can wing it. Nope. As somebody with rather severe ADD, this was a drastic mistake. If you have ADD (or ADHD), you know that your thoughts generally or NOT linear. Neither is your learning style. You leap. You jump. From salient point to salient point, often ignoring the filler inbetween. That filler? Those are TRANSITIONS. And transitions ARE SO IMPORTANT when giving a lecture or workshop because they add context and sense. When I prep, it helps me with those transitions. Otherwise, you end up just listing random bullet points and making a list. And that's pretty much just what I did. Oh dear. I jumped. I rambled. I lost my thread. Found it again a few times. But overall, I'd have declared this a National Disaster. It really wasn't all bad. People did learn something. But I didn't cover all of the material I wanted to (COMPLETELY forgot about Framing), and my examples ended up far more complicated than they needed to be. I walked away thoroughly embarassed with myself, and as somebody who's second-greatest fear is finding myself naked in front of a crowd, on stage, with spotlights (because that's exactly how it felt), that takes a little chutzpah to admit. Yet, admitting failure is the first step to doing it better the next time. I have dwelled on this every night since, thinking about how I'd do it better next time. And that right there is, I think, what turns potential failure into success. When I approach a new piece of art or writing, do I say, "Gosh. This just isn't turning out the way I want it to. I'm gonna draw something else."?  F**k no.  I take a step back. I analyze where things just aren't coming together. I pull out a fresh sheet of paper. And I do it again. And again. And again. Until I'm finally satisfied. It's how I've managed to keep improving as an artist, a writer, and a storyteller. And hopefully, this will improve my future workshops too. So, I now have a healthy new respect for teachers who somehow manage to do this eight hours a day, five days a week, for 3/4ths of the year. They don't get to prep weeks or months in advance. They get to prep during their free time when they are neither teaching nor getting paid.  That's because they're freaking heros. Now I'm going to go write that workshop the way it SHOULD have gone, so that the next time my brain swells up to the size of a balloon with needles of light stabbing into my eyes with my neck feeling like it's just been trampled by a herd of buffalo and my thoughts migrate with the grace of cotton candy, I can just close my eyes ... and begin. -Rivkah